8 of History’s Most Famous Charlatans, Con Artists, and Tricksters

Born in Canterbury, England, about 1635, Mary Carleton was a crafty trickster who posed as a German princess and seduced men in order to rob them. In 1660 she faced her first charge of bigamy, for remarrying while her first husband, a shoemaker, was still alive. But she escaped punishment by testifying that she had received word of his death prior to her second marriage. After the trial, she left the area. Years later, she turned up in London with an account of having come from the German city of Cologne. Masquerading as a German princess, she constructed a false tragic backstory. Her cultivated mannerisms—along with a few tasteful forgeries—were enough to convince the elite of her authenticity. In her disguise, she married the scrivener John Carleton, who had presented himself as a nobleman. When he and others uncovered her scheme and took her to court, she managed to turn the accusations against her back toward him, claiming that he had lied about his wealth and status: “You told me you were a lord, and I told you I was a princess, and I think I fitted you.” Her passionate self-defense persuaded the court to acquit her of the bigamy charge. Afterward she continued her practice of bigamy, leveraging her schemes to marry more men and steal from them. However, her crimes eventually caught up with her, and at about the age of 30 she was hanged.

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro was an Italian charlatan famous for his fraudulent alchemy. Born Giuseppe Balsamo into a poor family in 1743, he gained an affinity for deception in his youth, studying secret rituals and committing minor crimes. As a teenager, he stole from a goldsmith by enacting a devious scheme. He persuaded the metalworker to pay him in exchange for leading the man to a cave full of hidden treasure that was guarded by demons. In fact, the youth had hired a number of goatherds to masquerade as demons and frighten the goldsmith as Balsamo pocketed the money and abandoned the terrified man. Later Balsamo adopted the name and title Count Alessandro di Cagliostro and traveled around the world to learn the ways of alchemy and mysticism. After marrying Lorenza Feliciani, who became Cagliostro’s partner in crime, he visited every major city in Europe, peddling magic potions and holding séances. His reputation as a sorcerer flourished. However, Cagliostro’s campaign of trickery could not last forever. For his involvement in a number of schemes, he earned nine months of imprisonment in France's Bastille prison in 1785, followed by banishment. Later he faced torture and a death sentence in Rome after his wife testified to his heresy, but his punishment was commuted to life in prison.

Alfredo Bowman, better known as Dr. Sebi, developed a following as an herbalist healer with an outlandish philosophy of medicine. His clients reportedly included celebrities Michael Jackson, Teddy Pendergrass, and John Travolta. Bowman was born in Honduras in 1933. He emigrated to the United States and marketed his herbal remedies there, claiming that health depends on consuming alkaline products in order to reduce the body’s acidity. Cell Food, the most notorious product he designed and advertised, purported to detoxify the body and elevate its alkalinity. Without proof, he claimed that his remedies could cure people of a number of diseases, including AIDS, cancer, and lupus. Sebi’s career as a pseudoscientist led to a number of run-ins with the law. In the late 1980s he was sued twice—first for practicing medicine without a license and then for committing consumer fraud. Sebi dramatized the latter case in his retellings: he falsely claimed to have proved the efficacy of his medicine by bringing to court 77 people it had supposedly cured. However, that trial resulted in a settlement in which Sebi agreed to stop advertising the healing properties of his remedies; to stop diagnosing, treating, or prescribing for any human disease; and to refund any of his customers who had been dissatisfied. In 2004, after working with Jackson, Sebi attempted to sue the singer for unpaid bills and lost revenue. Sebi’s herbal remedies and memorable personality continued to have an outsize influence even after his death.

The so-called comte de Saint-Germain was a French adventurer of mysterious origin. Some hypothesized that he had been born into a Portuguese Jewish family, but his parentage remains uncertain. Toward the beginning of the 18th century, he gained notoriety as a chemist and advertised several false abilities, such as claiming that he could transmute one type of metal into another and could purify diamonds of their flaws. A charismatic and attractive man, Saint-Germain sought women’s favor by promising them cosmetics that would preserve their beauty. The count embraced the air of mystery that clung to him: when asked his age, he might reply that he was 300 years old or even immortal, which earned him the nickname “der Wundermann” (“the Wonderman”). Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova described the count as an “extraordinary man” who was “intended by nature to be the king of impostors and quacks.” Saint-Germain also demonstrated considerable musical talent: he held performances and contributed music to a number of operas. He spent the last decade of his life studying alchemy.

A New Zealander born in Tasmania in 1859, Amy Bock came to be one of the most successful female con artists in New Zealand’s history. While she staged a number of outrageous scams in her youth, her most famous scheme involved illegally marrying another woman. In South Otago, at the age of 49, Bock presented herself as a wealthy sheep farmer named Percy Redwood who was eager to woo Agnes Ottaway, a woman from a well-off family. Redwood appeared utterly charming to Ottaway and won over neighboring locals by buying them presents. Unbeknownst to them, Redwood had purchased the gifts on credit. While Agnes soon fell in love with Redwood, other members of her family remained skeptical of him. To assuage their concerns, Bock invented a rich mother for Redwood from whom Agnes’s mother received letters referring to his fortune and his honorable character. Percy and Agnes were eventually married, but within days a detective arrived at Bock’s door and arrested her for fraud. In court, she pleaded guilty to charges of forgery and false pretenses, and she became the first woman in New Zealand to be classified as a habitual criminal. Throughout her remaining life, she continued to enact minor cons, though her masquerade as Percy Redwood remained the best known.

The moniker “False Dmitry” denotes a number of people rather than a single person. Beginning in 1598, a number of pretenders claimed the identity of Dmitry Ivanovich, the deceased son of the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible. The first False Dmitry, who attempted to take the throne from Boris Godunov, earned enough support to invade Russia in 1604 and seize the throne. But the impostor’s victory was short-lived: angry about Dmitry’s unorthodox customs, aristocrat Vasily Shuysky launched a coup d’état that killed Dmitry. However, rumors that Dmitry had survived the coup began to circulate, providing fertile soil from which a second False Dmitry arose. Though he did not look like the first False Dmitry, the new pretender cultivated a following and marched toward Moscow. He settled outside that city in the town of Tushino until forced to flee. The second False Dmitry eventually died at the hands of one of his own followers. A third False Dmitry surfaced in 1611 and earned loyalty among the Cossacks and inhabitants of the city of Pskov. However, after being betrayed, he was executed in Moscow.

Baron Münchhausen, born in Germany in 1720, remains a legend in global folklore. After retiring from military service, he attracted local attention as a storyteller. The boastful baron made wild claims, often giving exaggerated accounts of his own exploits, such as his tale of sitting astride a cannonball as it soared through the air. In other popular narratives, he hurled a silver hatchet into the Moon, fought a 40-foot-long crocodile, and danced inside the belly of a giant fish. Münchhausen was known for presenting his outlandish fabrications in a matter-of-fact tone. This colorful version of himself soon took on new life through the written word: authors and translators including Rudolf Erich Raspe and Gottfried August Bürger published books based on Münchhausen’s whimsical tales. Those books and subsequent works of literature and art immortalized the baron as a fantastic comic character.

Natwarlal, India’s most-celebrated con artist, was born Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava in Bihar about 1913. Stories recounting how his career began vary: one claims that his father abused him as a child, forcing him to flee, while another contends that, as a youth, he discovered he had a knack for forgery and vanished after withdrawing money illegally. These tales of his early getaways foreshadow later stories noting his tendency to disappear. During his long career as a con artist, Natwarlal is said to have escaped prison 10 times. One account alleges that after he was arrested in 1957, he and an associate scammed a prison guard into providing him with a superintendent’s uniform so he could leave the prison freely. Later, as the story goes, when the guard opened the box containing his bribe, he found that, except for a few genuine banknotes on top, the contents consisted of worthless pieces of paper. In a striking conclusion to the dupe, the box is said to have burst into flames. Indeed, the accounts of Natwarlal’s cons are no less dramatic than those of his escapes. Allegedly, the swindler, disguised as a government official, sold the Taj Mahal three times. According to other accounts, Natwarlal undertook his final escape at the age of 84, disappearing from a wheelchair during transportation from prison to a hospital, never again to be caught by the authorities.